Midgard scenarios in Mystara
by Giampaolo AgostaChimpman has proposed an interesting topic for the adaptation of the Books of Ebon Tides, Kobold Press' Midgard subsetting and campaign set in the Shadow Plane, to Mystara.
Without hijacking his thread, I'd like to widen the discussion to other works from the Midgard setting. The reason is that Midgard shares some thematic elements with Mystara:
- RW inspiration: Midgard is actually a mirror of Central and Eastern Europe, mostly, with more remote areas mirroring Asia and Africa (with significant anachronisms, just like Mystara, which puts together Thothia's M-Ancient Egypt with medieval M-Europe as in Ostland or Karameikos).
- Shades-of-grey: while Midgard has some clearly cut evil kingdoms (Morgau and Doresh), others are much less denoted. Even the Empire of the Ghouls is not necessarily evil, and supports native characters, although probably opposed to the current expansionist ruler.
- Para-Lovecraftian Mythos: just like Mystara has the Outer Beings, so Midgard has the (more openly present) Old Ones.
- A focus on long campaigns: contrary to most 5e materials from WotC, Midgard adventures tend to be stretched over longer timelines, allowing PCs to engage in significant downtime activities.
Here is a list of the primary Midgard campaigns I know of:
- The Scarlet Citadel: This is a dungeon adventure set in the Magdar Kingdom (think Hungary in the Renaissance), involving a wide range of opponents and PNGs.
- Empire of the Ghouls: This is an adventure path to thwart the emergence of the Ghoul Imperium, which has allied with the vampire kingdom of Morgau and Doresh.
- Courts of the Shadow Fey: This is an adventure mostly set in the Shadow Plane to free the city of Zobeck from Shadow Fey encroachment.
The Scarlet Citadel
This is the easiest campaign to adapt to Mystara, since it is a location based campaign (megadungeon), which therefore needs primarily to choose a suitable location and a conversion for the various factions.
- Location: The Citadel, the village of Redtower, and the sorcerer Gellert Holzanger could easily fit in a remote Darokin Borderlands, with Gellert being a hereditary Magistrate. It is set over a cluster of ley lines, which in Mystara could translate to a (bad, most likely) magic point. Thus, a bordelands near Alfheim would be better
- Factions: The Citadel was built by dwarves, who could be survivors from the Glittering Realm or just dwarves from Rockhome. Other factions include: the Trollkin raiders, which could just translate to goblinoids (Orcs, most likely); the Shadow Fey could just be replaced by the Shadow Elves or the Sidhe, depending on whether one wants to highlight the "changeling" aspect of one of Gellert's ancestor or the threat of an invasion.
Empire of the Ghouls
A Kingdom of the Ghoul is hinted at in Castle Amber, but was never actually developed. In theory, it might be possible to envision a similar threat from such as Kingdom to any of the Mystaran states. However, a more organic, but more costly, option would be to replace the Ghoul Imperium and Morgau/Doresh with the Shadow Elves, and the fallen Electoral Kingdom of Krakova with Alfheim.
Courts of the Shadow Fey
The Shadow Fey do not have an exact correspondence in Mystara, but the adventure per se features them as an entirely new threat. Once more, they could be dark Sidhe or Shadow Elves, although probably the first option is easier. Zobeck, which is the starting point of the adventure, could be replaced with Selenica or Darokin, although in Midgard Zobeck is a smaller city state compared to the Republic of Darokin. Another options could be Slagovich, which has a more similar size, but would obviously work only with a dark Sidhe interpretation of the Shadow Fey.
I now notice that I forgot one easy pick: Tales of the Old Margreve. The entire collection could easily fit in the Gnomstal Forest in Norwold, at least in my take of Norwold (see my articles on Threshold) -- the Vrodniki barbarians can take the place of the Khazzaki or other people of the Rothenian Plains of Midgard, Centaur hordes are present in both worlds, and the nations surrounding the Margreve, albeit not particularly important for the forest setting itself, can be easily replaced by Saffir, Lighthall and Landfall.
Actually, Tales of the Old Margreve was one of the first Kobold Press adventures I got, and I wrote part of the Norwold material with the idea of using the adventure there, as well as leveraging similar source materials (see e.g. the relevance of Baba Yaga in Midgard and the presence of the Baba Yaga-like character of Koldunya in the Skaufskogr article).